There were some commercial realities for small-business owner Andi Carole to digest in the wake of an Aug. 3 fire that damaged some of her Casa Veinte store of upscale women's fashions at 20 Sea St., Hyannis.

She said she learned that she pays out faster than her insurance company by giving three youths who discovered the fire a timely reward. She also found out, she said, that you never get your true product replacement costs; that she isn't the only victim of smokers who carelessly discard cigarettes or of quibbling insurers who settle claims at their own leisure; and that firefighters and craftsmen can be diligent.

And while she may not have specific recommendations for other small-business owners to better protect themselves from fire losses, the Hyannis Fire District and the town's Growth Management Department are acting to do just that.

Hyannis Deputy Fire Chief Dean Melanson said last week the district has worked with the growth department to draft new rules limiting the placement of bark mulch or wood chips along buildings in the downtown business area.

The cause of fire at Carole's building was a lighted cigarette carelessly discarded into dry mulch that had been placed some four or five inches thick, a bit of it covering wood shingles above a low foundation. A cigarette butt flicked into the mulch simmered for quite some time and finally ignited the 1892 building's older wood. Melanson said the mulch fire found its way to a 2x4 and side planks used in those days before the advent of plywood sheets.

"It must have been smoldering for a long time," he said. "The kids did the right thing. They called 911 from a cell phone and got the police, who called us. It was just starting to take off" when firefighters arrived.

Carole said she suspects the cigarette came from a resident(s) of a condo building next door who smoke outside a rear door in the alleyway. Melanson said firefighters found many cigarette butts in the immediate area. He said this type of fire is more prevalent since smoking has been banned inside most buildings.

Melanson said there have been a number of such fires in town, where cigarettes or other flammable has been deposited in mulch and caused fire damage to buildings and decks. He urges smokers to use caution disposing of cigarettes and make sure they are out.

As to paying claims, Melanson said there are several cases where the insured have been waiting for more than a year to be paid.

While smokers who start fires such as these are not held accountable because they can't be identified, they cause a lot of emotional and economic damage to others, Carole and Melanson said.

On the bright side, Carole has nothing but the highest praise for Hyannis firefighters and for Whelan Restoration of South Dennis that she said got her business up and running in just eight days -- but she wishes her insurer, who she preferred not to identify, would pay Whalen his money as quickly as she rewarded the boys who reported the fire before it could cause a major conflagration.

A few days after she reopened for business, two of the boys who were on a sleepover jaunt and reported the 3 a.m. fire came to the store to see how Carole was faring.

"I thanked them for alerting officials and gave them a reward," Carole said. "A few days later, I received a call from somebody with a fairly deep voice that I thought might be one of the boys' parents asking if I had given them a reward.

"I said I had and hoped he wasn't upset by it. 'Well I'm the third one who found the fire and they didn't share the reward with me,' the voice over the phone replied. "I thought that was so cute. I told him to come by and I'd take care of it," Carole said. He did.

"It's fortunate that I had some savings," Carole said, so she could purchase replacement stock. None of the garments displayed along the burning wall caught fire and surprisingly did not have much of an odor, she said. The insurance company wanted to have the items dry cleaned. "I said 'no' because that would not be honorable," she said.

The business disruption and the wait for claims to be paid are part of the risks of small business, Carole says, particularly in a seasonal economy: "You work six months to pay the taxes, you bank about three weeks in the summer, and the rest goes for other operating costs. And I lost almost half of those three weeks because of the fire."